


It's A Secret No One Tells

by icewhisper



Series: Fight or Flight [1]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Series, Pre-Slash, Wings AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 08:29:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10850238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: The first time Mick saw Len, he had two thoughts. One, the kid was going to get himself killed. Two, he looked as frail as his kid sister’s baby bird. Turns out, he wasn’t that far off.





	1. Chapter 1

Watching the fresh meat get escorted in was like watching his dad pick ponies at the races. Eyes raked over each and every one of them, spotting the seasoned vets from the scared newbies and the ones that just pretended they weren’t about to shit themselves. It was tradition. It was habit, a fact of life.

Or it _was_ right up until some twelve-year-old came waltzing in and fucked with the whole world order.

He was definitely new, eyes darting around and taking everything in, but the little shit didn’t even look scared. If anything, he looked thoroughly unimpressed by the Santini welcoming committee that always stepped forward to put the fear of God into the freshmen.

Twelve years old, not even as tall as Mick’s shoulder, and so thin that he looked as frail as his kid sister’s baby bird. The little fucker was going to die and _soon_ if he kept looking at Don Santini like that.

He said something, voice too low for Mick to hear over the chatter in the rec room, but he watched Don’s cheeks flush red and fists clench. Dead. He was so dead. The brat hadn’t even been in juvie for an hour and he was going to be leaving in a body bag.

It wasn’t his problem, he told himself and pointedly turned his back as Don’s crew of mob-lite started crowding the kid back towards a corner they all knew the cameras couldn’t catch. Once he was out of sight of the guards, it was as good as done.

Not his problem. He had four months left on his sentence before they tossed him back to his parents. He’d be home in time for harvest season and he’d get a belt to his ass if he missed it and left his dad to depend on illegal workers and baby siblings that weren’t even as tall as the shovels.

Except, the kid was the same size as Matt and as rail-thin as Lacey.

He cursed under his breath.

Saving that kid’s ass had better be worth his dad tanning his hide.

 

 

(It was worth it as much as it wasn’t, he’d realize. Thirty years later, he’d still have days where he kicked himself for getting involved.)

 

 

At the very least, Mick could give the kid credit. He was a scrapper. There wasn’t any real skill to his fighting—more flailing and desperate jabs than anything—but he knew how to fight dirty. A few guys were bleeding from scratches down their faces and he thought he saw the little psycho bite Jimmy. Definitely bit him, because the guy howled and slammed a fist into the side of the kid’s head that must have had him seeing stars.

The kid hit the ground like he knew how to fall. It said enough about where he came from that Mick didn’t need to ask who beat on him. It didn’t matter and Mick didn’t care.

“Back off,” he said and instantly regretted leaving his chair and the safety of his corner. No one bothered him over there. He should have kept his head down.

“What do you care?” Don huffed and delivered a sharp kick to the kid’s back.

The kid whimpered.

“You kill him, we’re all gonna get stuck in lockdown,” he grunted, “and we all know what you guys are hiding in your bunks. Go ahead and get busted with it for all I care, but they’re gonna search everyone. I’m not losing my lighter.”

A couple of the guys exchanged uneasy glances, like they were questioning how safe it was to take the pyro’s only source of fire away. The contraband lighters he got his hands on every so often only kept him calm until the fluid ran out. If they were gone…

“He disrespected the boss,” Anthony said, shiv clenched in his fist like the budding sociopath he was. They needed to keep that one locked up for a good long time.

“Don’t care. Guards don’t give a shit most days, but you start killing twelve-year-olds, you make problems for everyone.” He levelled Don with a glare, defaulting to the little gang’s leader, but he saw every single one of them hesitate in his peripheral. “Back off.”

Don glared back at him, sneering. “His father owes us.”

Great. Great job, Mick. He’d gone and gotten himself involved over a kid with mob ties. He never should have gotten off his ass.

“Don’t care,” he said, even though he did and really wanted nothing to do with this anymore. “You think your daddy’s gonna be happy when he finds out you got yourself busted _again_? You’re losing his product.”

Don’s face darkened, but Mick saw the fear lying beneath it. Bingo.

They left, threatening and shoving Mick back into a wall, but he let them go. He’d pissed off the junior mobsters enough.

He shook his head, ready to go back to his corner and fingers that would twitch until he could get some time with his lighter, but the kid pushed himself to his knees like he hadn’t just had the snot beat out of him. He was going to do more damage if he kept going.

Mick sighed.

Damn it.

“Anything broken?” he asked as he stepped closer.

The kid stiffened before he muttered out a soft _no_ , but his face looked like something out of a horror movie and he had a protective arm wrapped around his ribs. He staggered to his feet, stumbling, but Mick caught him as his right knee buckled.

“Yeah,” he huffed, “you’re right as rain. Your knee’s fucked.”

“Medical school teach you that?” the kid asked, sarcastic, and with the worst damn Central City accent Mick had ever heard. Definitely the slums, he thought, and the worst corners of it.

“Juvie,” he said shortly in reply. “You should let the nurse check you out.”

“I’ve got it,” the kid muttered and shoved him off. Beaten all to hell, but Mick was impressed with the force of it. The kid was willowy, but he had some strength hidden in matchstick arms.

Mick held up his hands in defeat, eyes rolling towards the ceiling. “Whatever you want, half-pint, but steer clear of Mobs ‘R’ Us. I’m not saving your ass again.”

The kid was still leaning against the wall when he went back to his corner, but Mick washed his hands of it. He was out. Whatever the kid did from there was his own problem.

 

 

Someone upstairs hated him, because the kid became his roomie and he ended up being Mick’s problem again.

And he took Mick’s bunk.

He might kill him himself.

 

 

“How long are you in for?” Mick sighed, put out and annoyed, after the guards had sent them all off to their cells for the night.

The kid glanced up from his stolen bottom bunk. “Three months.”

Three months before Mick’s life could go back to being uncomplicated. He wondered if he could develop an ulcer at fourteen. “First crime?”

“First time I got caught,” the kid drawled with a cockiness that made Mick want to punch him. He didn’t. The nurse had already patched him up and winding bandages were probably the only thing holding the little shit together.

“Awesome,” he muttered. “You got a name?”

“Leonard.”

“No wonder you’re used to getting your ass kicked,” he snorted. “You got a last name?”

“Snart.”

“You never had a chance, did you?” Mick asked blankly, because no parent that actually _liked_ their kid was gonna saddle them with a name like that. “You say your middle name’s Eugene, I’m walking out of here.”

(A year later, he’d find out it was Abraham and lose his shit, because Leonard Abraham Snart was just _mean_.)

Leonard glared at him, but Mick smirked back as he sized him up. “I’m gonna call you Len,” he decided. “I ain’t calling you Leonard. I’ll have to kick your ass on principle.”

Len echoed the name, bewildered. “My dad calls me Leo,” he muttered in a weak argument.

“You’re no lion.” He wasn’t even sure the kid was lions’ _prey_. He was too scrawny.

Len made a noise of agreement and picked a little dried blood out from under his nail. “I’m not much of a cat person,” he drawled and it took Mick a second to follow where he was going with that. “I like birds.”

The kid was fucking weird, smirking some little smirk like Mick was missing a joke. He probably was. Whatever.

“Just don’t sneak a damn parakeet in here,” he grumbled and hefted himself up onto the top bunk. “Only reason I haven’t turned my sister’s into chicken wings is ‘cause she’s family. You bring a damn bird in here, I’m making jailhouse KFC.”

“It would probably taste better than what they serve here.”

Mick barked out a laugh.

 

 

Len kept to himself for the most part, watching everyone—Mick included—with distrusting eyes while his fingers twitched the same way Mick’s did sometimes. Too many years with too many shrinks told him it was too early for them to put a name to whatever was screwy in Len’s head, but he could take a guess. He watched Len pick pockets like it was as easy as breathing and saw the surprised look he’d get sometimes, like he hadn’t meant to do it at all. Habit and compulsions, Mick could understand. His just drove him to a flame instead of someone else’s wallet.

He’d pick the wrong guy’s pocket someday, but it worked out in Mick’s favor when Len came back to their cell one day and dropped three lighters onto the mattress. They were cheap ones—definitely wouldn’t hold up to prolonged periods of watching the flicker of the flame—but they were better than nothing and the one he kept hidden under his pillow had run out of fluid.

“Where the hell did you get these?” he asked as he squirrelled them away.

“Guards,” Len answered, but he didn’t specify who. Mick doubted he even knew who they came from. He always seemed to focus more on the theft than the person. “One of them had a Zippo.”

“So where is it?”

“It was engraved. I had to put it back.” He screwed up his nose as he said it, like he was more bothered by having to return it than the fact that he’d stolen it at all.

Mick grumbled, but he got it. No one was going to care if they lost a fifty-cent lighter, but the guards got possessive over the shit that meant something. It wasn’t worth the hell that would get rained down on them. “Thanks,” he told him anyway. “I miss Christmas or something?”

“I’m Jewish,” Len said simply.

“That mean you just give out gifts randomly?”

“It means I don’t do Christmas.” Which, thanks, but Mick already knew that. He was going to punch the little shit.

“So the lighters?”

Len shrugged. “It’s safer if one person here doesn’t want to kill me.”

Mick squinted at him. “We’re not friends, you know.”

Something flashed across Len’s face too fast for Mick to decipher it and he turned towards the sink. “I don’t do friends.”

“Whatever. Just don’t start following me around out there. Assholes already think I protected you to get something out of it.” Len looked at him, frowning, and Mick rolled his eyes. “They’ve got prison bitches in juvie too. Don’t- Don’t fucking look at me like that. You’re twelve-”

“I’m fourteen.”

“-you _look_ twelve. Even if I got desperate in here, that’s not something I’m touching with a ten-foot pole.”

Len glared at him like the little shit he was and Mick wondered if he’d be the one that ended up killing him. Figured it would be rude after the lighters. He could hold off until they burned themselves out.

After that, it was fair game.

 

 

A month into living with the most irritating roommate ever—and he’d roomed with Brent Morris, thank you very much—he came back to see a sheet hung across the bars. His stomach dropped, mouth dry, and… He shouldn’t care. He _didn’t_ care. But even after he’d healed up, Len still looked like he was twelve—closer to ten when he was grumbling and hiding under flimsy blankets in the morning—and everyone knew what a sheet meant.

He meant to walk away, but his feet moved towards the cell instead of away from it and he shoved the starchy sheet out of the way, ready to see something no amount of church or puking was going to erase from his memory, but-

Feathers.

He saw feathers, stark black and messy, but they were attached to a bent-up wing that was attached to his freaky little cellmate.

“What. The. Fuck.”

Len went stiff, spinning around so fast that the wing—an actual fucking _wing_ —knocked their radio off the little table. It broke when it hit the ground and he’d be pissed about it later, but Mick was ninety-percent sure he was having some kind of breakdown, so it wasn’t all that important at the moment.

“You were supposed to knock,” Len argued, because the idiot thought manners were a thing that existed in juvie. Suddenly, though, the weird contortionist shit he pulled when he changed suddenly made sense and-

“My roommate’s a fucking bird,” Mick muttered, wide eyes still stuck on wings that seemed too big for a kid his size. Right. Because smaller wings would have made sense, he thought with a snort that bordered on hysterical. “I’ve lost it. That’s what I get for watching that fucking Hitchcock movie. My ma told me not to.”

“Mick-”

“Are you gonna peck my eyes out?”

Len pulled him inside with what was either a burst of strength or Mick being too lost in his hallucination to fight. He stumbled inside as the sheet fell shut. “I don’t… Are you insane?”

“Clearly.” He wondered if Jewish people believed in angels, because the wings gave Len this weird fallen angel look and, _holy shit_ , he’d lost his damn mind.

“You can’t tell anyone.”

“I think you’re supposed to tell your shrink when you’ve had a psychotic break,” Mick said, “though, she can probably figure it out on her own.”

“You’re not crazy-”

“My weird little roommate has wings.”

Len stepped away from him, wings curling in towards himself like some kind of barrier, and Mick wondered if that was bird-speak for being hurt. He’d called Len weird before, but mostly in his head and…

He came out of the fog slowly, tearing his eyes away from wings to look at Len’s face instead and the guy looked… He hadn’t actually seen Len show that much emotion before. The kid had been closed off from the get-go, defaulting to snark and cockiness that Mick knew was going to get him killed eventually, but he’d never looked vulnerable. Even when he’d been bloody and curled up in a ball that first day, he hadn’t looked like he was scared.

He did now.

“Fuck,” he muttered. “I’m not crazy, am I?”

Len shook his head and, fuck, scratch scared. The kid looked terrified. “You can’t tell anyone,” he said again, “ _please_. I can explain. Just… Don’t tell anyone.”

Mick nodded slowly and his hand moved of its own accord, reaching out until fingertips brushed against feathers that felt stupidly soft. Real, he told himself. They were real. “You have wings.”

Len let out a shuddering breath. “Yeah.”

Mick had no idea what to do with that.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

Mick woke up the next morning convinced that he’d dreamed the whole thing.

He dropped down from the top bunk and made it halfway through his morning routine before he felt eyes on him. It wasn’t weird. Len had always been an overly cautious creeper that people-watched to the point that it seemed a bit stalker-ish, but he wasn’t usually crowded back into the corner of his bed. He was wearing one of Mick’s heavier sweatshirts, too warm for the middle of July, and it dwarfed Len.

He opened his mouth to tell him he was being creepy again—because, sometimes, the kid needed the reminder to act like a normal human—when his eyes followed Len’s arm up across his chest and over his shoulder to his…

Oh. Not a dream.

Panic built up in his head again, ready to go absolutely bat-shit crazy, but he stomped it down. “You really have…”

Len nodded.

“Okay. Yeah. Gonna need the story about why I’m rooming with one of the X-Men _after_ breakfast,” he said, because if his whole world order was about to get tossed through a blender, he at least wanted a full belly first. “I’m taking your bacon. You never eat it, anyway.”

“I’m Jewish,” Len reminded him at a murmur. “It’s not kosher.”

“You’re never gonna sell me on a religion that doesn’t let me eat bacon,” Mick told him, but the familiar topic didn’t bring any comfort to the situation. They were both too tense.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Don’t care. I already gotta wrap my head around the fact I’m sharing a room with Big Bird and Tinkerbell’s lovechild. I don’t feel like finding out if birds can be anorexic too.”

Len muttered something under his breath that was probably _I’m not anorexic_ , but that was a subject for another day when wings didn’t win out over the fact the kid ate like a bird and… Huh. Shit suddenly made a bit more sense.

 

 

He didn’t get the story out of Len until after breakfast. They returned to the privacy of their cell as the others drifted towards the rec room.

Mick hung a sheet for privacy and kissed what was left of his reputation goodbye. It didn’t matter. People had already made their assumptions the day Len showed up and he got himself involved. Let them think what they wanted, he told himself and shot a glare at a smirking jackass that was walking by.

“Talk,” Mick said when they were both sitting cross-legged on the bottom bunk.

Len did. A lot. Most days, he was quiet, too busy being creepy to be annoying, but there were other days when he _would not shut up_. Those days, Mick seriously contemplated killing him himself, because most of it was irritating babble. This time, though, he listened to a story unfold that felt more like a sci-fi movie than real life.

Len curled in on himself as he talked, crossed legs pulled up towards his chest and arms wrapped around his knees sometimes and bent up to touch his back others. He didn’t stop fidgeting until Mick reached forward to hold his wrist. Then, everything in him seemed to deflate.

“My dad made her do the drug trial,” he told Mick. “I don’t know if he knew what they were doing, but she didn’t. I know she didn’t.” Blue eyes pressed closed, face contorted, and Mick knew enough to know he was hurting. Still, Len’s voice cracked when he spoke again. “She didn’t know.”

“Kid-”

But Len kept talking, breaking down science experiments until it just sounded like scientists piecing together DNA as if it were Legos. Babies that were born with blue skin and limp wings. Babies that were born not looking like babies at all. More died than lived. Len was surprised he’d survived as long as he had, sure that hollow bones and a too-fast heart would have been his downfall faster than useless wings.

“She kept me away from them. When she figured out what they were doing…” Len stared at him, eyes bright, and fuck, Mick hoped he didn’t start crying. He couldn’t deal with crying. “She protected me.” End of the day, though, she still ran away and left him behind. Mick didn’t care if her guilt drove her away. She abandoned her kid to a dad Mick didn’t think was any better than the scientists.

“What happens if these guys find you?”

“I don’t know,” Len confessed. “Take me back? Kill me, maybe. There isn’t much of a point in having wings if you can’t use them.”

He said the words so simply that it made Mick nauseous. Young as they were, no one should have been able to talk about getting put down as easily as Len seemed to.

“Stay away from them,” he told him, voice firm and hands curled into fists. “They come near you-”

“What do you care?” Len asked, brows furrowed. “We’re not friends, remember?”

They weren’t. Some shitty origin story didn’t make a friendship, but something protective lit up in Mick’s chest. He didn’t need to be the kid’s friend to want him alive. “Don’t care. You stay away from them, you hear me?”

“I’m out of here in two months. After that, you won’t see me again.”

 

 

 

Three years back, his dad had brought a thoroughbred home with some crazy idea that he could get them into the racing circuit. The thing had been beautiful, all strong limbs and sleek coat, but his gut said something was off. The beauty didn’t win out over the wildness in the horse’s gait. His siblings cried, but he never let them ride it, stubborn and pigheaded as ever, even when his father tried to tell him he was being dramatic.

That horse ended up tossing him one time and he broke three bones on the landing.

He got the same feeling with Len, the same churning feeling that something just wasn’t right. At first, he thought it was just because of the extra limbs the kid kept hidden in his back. Time passed, though, and the wings became something that felt normal. He’d hang the sheet to provide a little privacy so Len could stretch out and they went from being strange to just being a part of the already-weird kid the guards had stuck him with.

The oddness of the wings faded, but the feeling didn’t and for a long time, he didn’t understand. He watched Len fidget as his release date came closer. Less food made it into his mouth. His wings twitched with a nervous thrum that Mick would bet his eyeteeth matched the fast patter of Len’s heart.

When Len started flinching at the slightest hint of a raised hand, he connected the dots.

He’d known from day one that Len was used to getting beat on. He’d seen it in the way Len took a punch and the practiced way he shoved himself back onto his feet. Mostly, he’d let himself assume it was the kids at school that did it, targeting the too-small kid with the too-serious eyes and the creepy people-watching habit. He didn’t connect the dots to _dad_ until days before the guy was set to take Len home.

“Don’t get involved,” Len told him when he asked. “I have it handled.”

“Pretty sure they teach you to tell someone.”

“Doesn’t do much good when your dad’s a cop,” Len said simply. “It’s not that bad.”

Mick didn’t believe him, but he didn’t make a fuss when Len left in September. He told himself he’d washed his hands of it, that Len being gone was good. He could finish out his last month and get back to the farm in time to help his dad with the harvest.

He got out three weeks after Len did and buried himself in his work. He caught up in school as much as he could—mostly to appease his mother—and grumbled his way through English and words he didn’t understand. He pulled his hair during algebra and complained about what idiot thought letters belonged in math. He worked the harvest, pushing his body until he collapsed into bed, too tired to think about the winged weirdo from juvie.

They covered Edgar Allan Poe in November and as the teacher droned on about The Raven—toting around a stuffed one that was nine kinds of creepy—Mick found himself comparing. Same shape. Same dark feathers. He trailed his fingers down them one time when the teacher put the bird down on his desk and thought Len’s were softer. Definitely messier, he thought with a soft chuckle, and found himself wandering the school library during lunch.

He read about birds as the old woman at the front desk eyed him warily.

She expected him to burn something. He surprised them both by just wanting to learn.

 

 

“What are you doing here?” Len asked him when he came home from school one day in January and Mick’s ass had frozen to his front step. There was a little girl clinging to his hand and hiding behind his legs. Lisa, he thought as he pulled at foggy memories of Len talking about a kid sister.

“You know Keystone gets longer breaks than Central?” he mused instead of answering the question. “I think it’s ‘cause of all the farms. Kids work their asses off in the fields, so they gotta work the year around us helping our parents.”

Len looked at him like he was the crazy one—not unfamiliar, but strange coming from Len—and let Mick follow them inside. He shooed Lisa upstairs with quiet urgings to play with her doll and turned back to Mick with a frown. “What are you doing here?” he asked again.

“We learned about ravens in class.” Which was kind of the truth, but not really. They’d learned about the poem, but he was the one that dove headfirst into whatever books their tiny library had.

“And?”

“Pretty sure that’s what you are,” Mick said with a shrug and dropped down onto a worn couch. “You’d said you didn’t know.”

“You tracked me down to tell me that?”

Mick hummed and leaned back, but he kept his eyes trained on Len’s face. Half of it was purple. “Your dad do that?”

“Mick-”

He held up a hand. “Never mind.” Because that wasn’t why he was there, even if the idea made rage bubble up in his gut. It was one thing for his own father to slap him around if he fucked up on the farm, but something about Len’s dad taking a fist to him made Mick angry. “You never mentioned if your sister has-”

“She doesn’t,” Len said, suddenly tense.

“She know about yours?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not really. Just figured it’d be easier if she knew. Less questions when we get back.”

“Get back?”

“To Keystone.” Mick stood and took a step closer to Len, but the kid reared back like a spooked horse. “I don’t like thinking about scientists fucking around with kids,” he told him seriously. “Just ‘cause you can’t fly south for the winter doesn’t mean they gotta be dead weight.”

“I don’t think ravens migrate.”

They didn’t. Mick had read about that, but Len was getting in the way of his point. “These guys find you, you need to be able to protect yourself. I don’t need to be your friend to not wanna see you become some guy’s Thanksgiving dinner.”

“I’m not a turkey,” Len muttered under his breath. He sighed. “You tracked me down to help me learn to fly?”

“I wanna see what happens if I push you off a roof,” Mick admitted and quickly added, “a short one. Kinda wanna see if your wings can hold you. And it gets you out of here for a while.”

“Lisa-”

“-can watch, if she wants. Or she can play with my sister. They’re the same age,” Mick replied with a shrug. “You want me out, I’m out, but I figured you’d wanna make sure she didn’t get stuck in the crossfire if these psychos found you.”

 

 

They made it to Keystone by dinnertime with Len carrying Lisa from the bus stop all the way to the farm. His mother welcomed them with open arms, warmer jackets, and hot cocoa topped with mini marshmallows.

“Cocoa isn’t cocoa without them,” she told them with an indulging smile. Mick cursed under his breath. He knew that look. That look was why they had more pets than they knew what to do with. Five minutes with them and she’d picked up two more strays.

Fucking wonderful.

Lisa played with Emma and the others while he took Len out to the old shed they didn’t use anymore. It was out of sight of the house and Mick cut slits into an old sweater for Len to stick his wings though.

He pushed Len off the roof of the shed and laughed his ass off when Len tumbled into the snow bank. He couldn’t fly, but Len did manage to slap him with a wing.

The little shit looked pretty satisfied about that.

They weren’t friends, but by the time April rolled around and Len managed to finally— _finally_ —hover and lower himself to the ground instead of crashing, they were.

The End


End file.
